Reviews of anything and everything worth watching on TV or reading in books...

Friday, 20 July 2012

The Keys of Marinus

Sigh – Terry F*****g Nation again. After the exceptional Marco Polo, the next story was always going to have to try really
hard to impress. The Keys of Marinus sadly fails to deliver. It is entertaining, silly nonsense, and the
concept is brilliant – indeed, it’s one that will be returned to, far more successfully,
during Tom Baker’s tenure. Sadly,
though, this doesn’t work for precisely the reason that the Key to Time season does.
As a series of linked stories, an overall arc with a final goal, the
concept works, but due to time constraints, and that great enemy of Doctor Who, budget restraints, this
serial sadly flounders. Don’t get me
wrong – there are a number of excellent ideas in there; the episode set in
Morphoton is based upon a brilliantly effective idea. Indeed, it features the first hypnosis in Doctor Who, something which will be relied
upon as a plot device time and time again.
But without time for some of the stories to develop, it all seemed a
little brief and loosely handled.

There are things to get excited about by this serial, or
course – the first ever materialisation, some wonderful models, and the
beautiful Altos are all amongst them.
Hartnell also has some corkers in this script, which are laudable – his point
about shoes in the first episode never fails to make me chuckle. It is just that, after such a natural, strong
moral adventure as Marco Polo, Nation’s
script all feels a little too flat and staid.
Conversations of educational import are thrown in, crowbarred into
discussion where they simply do not sound natural. Whilst Lucarotti uses education almost subliminally,
Nation tacks random points on here and there.
Take, for example, the discussion of the ancient pyramids of Egypt and
South America whilst they inspect Arbitan’s monumental home. Despite the fact that Susan has disappeared,
and they really should be looking for her, they are, instead, admiring the
architecture. It all feels so... well,
glib, for want of a better word. What is
nice about this particular exchange is that it foreshadows the next serial,
another Lucarotti gem The Aztecs,
where Barbara’s fascination for the South American culture is the driving force
behind the entire narrative.

Arbitan’s home is, in and of itself, a preposterous
joke. As Voord and crew alike are
swallowed up by the walls, we are told that Arbitan has tried devoutly to keep
the Conscience safe. Perhaps if it weren’t
so ridiculously easy to enter the building, it would have remained safer? For one thing, he certainly wouldn’t have
been murdered in the closing minutes of the story. And after all of the lengthy and detailed
discussion in the previous story, the suggestion that a machine could force every
one on Marinus to have a conscience against their own free will is rather
disturbing. Whilst the Doctor and crew
at first refuse to help, it is simply because they feel like they’re being put
out by the whole thing, not on the grounds that it is morally
reprehensible. In fact, it isn’t until
the closing monologue of the entire story, 5 and a half episodes later, that
the Doctor admits that he thinks that such a machine should never have been
allowed to exist, whereby making those preceding episodes irrelevant anyway.

The Voord are quite an interesting idea – as is typical with
the ‘monsters’ of the first few series’, costumes always led to rather
unbelievable creations. Here, though, they
simply look like men in wetsuits. Which
is shit. But, and this is the
interesting thing, it is as though the production team realise that it is shit,
and so instead make a point of saying that they wear wetsuits. The dreadful
costume is actually intentional, and serves almost as a private joke at the
viewers’ expense. The Voord are
humanoid, at least, and don this protective clothing because of the acid sea
surrounding the island. Sadly, less convincing
is the poor Voord who plummets to his/her/its death – clearly a one-dimensional
cardboard cut-out.

Once the story gets off properly, we reach the city of
Morphoton, a land of luxury and grandeur, which is actually disgusting and
rundown, but everyone has been drugged into believing it. And this is where the entire serial begins to
fall apart. Last week, we were on a
glass beach, looking out over a sea of acid – “The Sea of Death”, in fact! –
and inside an enormous temple dominated by a gigantic machine which controls
the will of all of the inhabitants of Marinus.
This week, we’re in a dilapidated city ruled by brains in jars, where
the citizens see splendour abound. Next
week we’re in “The Screaming Jungle”, the week after the cast are buried in “The
Snows of Terror”, and the last two weeks are within the city of Millenius,
before hopping back to Arbitan’s temple.
The issue, of course, is that for each of these various locations,
unique sets need building. Within the
budget constraints of the time, they did their very best – Raymond Cusick’s
design work is again very respectable considering what he had to work
with. In fact, an issue they had to
overcome is that Cusick spent much of his budget on the Conscience machine,
leaving him to scrounge and salvage much of the sets from other locations and
TV shows.

The biggest victim of these financial restraints, though, is
“The Velvet Web”, where through clever editing we are able to see the two
perspectives in tandem – through Barbara’s eyes, the filth and grime is
disgusting, yet from the perspective of the others, the place is paradise. I love the scene where Susan proffers her new
dress, and Barbara mutters “dirty!” like she were scolding a young boy for
looking at pornography. The difficulty
faced by John Gorrie and the crew, however, is insurmountable; neither is the
grandeur manageable, or the filth disgusting enough. There are only marginal differences between
the two sets. Particularly considering
it was filmed ‘as live’, it is respectable, as the two camera angles only
allowed brief pauses to reset where editing was almost impossible. But Nation’s script, despite being so basic,
is far too brave to manage it all convincingly enough.

As they eventually escape from Morphoton into “The Screaming
Jungle”, Susan heads off first, despite that not having worked too well for
Barbara earlier on. She arrives in the
jungle, and proceeds to flagellate herself, tearing at her hair and moaning and
screaming constantly. Once the others
arrive, she comes across as a needy only child, refusing to grow up – she is
desperate to go with the Doctor, despite him evidently needing a break from her
whining. The management of Hartnell’s
holiday – the first of many – is well controlled, as he makes the decision to
head off for the fourth key, leaving the rest of the crew in charge for the
next two episodes. Again, the sets are
the biggest downfall for this serial – not only did the script demand a jungle
and a house which will be invaded by the plant life, but it also needed a
complex series of boobytraps which were believable. And again, Cusick has done his best, but they
are simply rubbish – wobbly sets are excusable, but compared with how magical
and wonderfully realised Marco Polo
was, this just looks inexcusably bad.

Edmund Warwick’s appearance as Darius is wonderful,
though. His suspicion of Barbara and Ian
is great – even though seconds after trapping them both he calls for help as a
vine attaches itself to his neck. Warwick
would later appear twice as the Doctor himself, doubling for Hartnell and
appearing as a robot version of him in a later Nation story. Here, moments before dying, he trusts the two
companions, and whispers a scientific formula to them. Again, my issue with this is twofold – first,
Ian, as a chemistry teacher, should surely have figured this out quicker? Secondly, considering the danger they are in,
why did he not simply say “In the jar”?
It is convoluted, but allowing a certain degree of ‘education’ to slip
in, I guess.

Once the second key is acquired, the crew are off to “The
Snows of Terror”, buried in jabolite and freezing to the bones. This episode works, to some extent, based
purely on the appearance of Vasor, the trapper.
Francis de Woolff is brilliant, playing the villain like a bad guy from
a DW Griffiths film in the 1920s – all that he is really missing is a lengthy
enough moustache to twiddle as he raises his arms, tiptoeing around the room
after Barbara. And this is where it
becomes mildly disturbing. Doctor Who is principally a children’s’
television show. Whilst adults do, of
course watch it, it was conceived as an educational adventure series. Here, though, the threat of sexual violence
and danger is unnerving. He wants to
rape Barbara. We know this. We can tell.
It isn’t subtle, and as such even children must have picked up on
it?

Education worms its way in here, again, as we are told about
frostbite and the correct way to prevents you from losing a finger. Likewise, inside the scenes, a comment is
shoehorned in about hot springs and the release of hot water from deep within
the Earth. The scenes in the caves are
relatively tense, but again are let down by the set clearly simply being
wrapped in cellophane. The sequences on
the bridge are acceptably scary – and yet this is the only time that Carole Ann
Ford doesn’t scream. Once the crew have returned to Vasor’s
cabin, ice soldiers in tow, to retrieve their wristbands, they leave the rapist
to be skewered by a sword and head off to Millenius, where Ian is promptly
knocked out and framed for murder.

The episodes in Millenius are by far the strongest, as the
budget for the sets was twice that of the other locations. As a show, Doctor Who was still finding its feet, establishing exactly what
sort of show it was. As such, the
courtroom drama model works well here, with Hartnell back from a break and on
top form. I can imagine few people
better suited to represent you than Hartnell’s Doctor, who is all bluster and
rage when arguing his case. Again, for a
children’s TV show, it is surprisingly glib about wife beating, as we hear a
full-force slap across the face from the other side of a locked door. When the wifebeater is murdered in the
courtroom, shot by an unknown assailant, the cast give a respectable gravitas
to the situation, as silence descends, and they all look around, shocked.

Of course, it is quickly unwound, Ian is saved from
execution, and the bad guys are caught from their own stupidity, and our
intrepid explorers, along with Sabetha and the irresistible Altos, return to
Arbitan’s home, only to discover that Yartek is impersonating Arbitan – very badly. What frustrates me here is that if the
wetsuits are only protective clothing, why are they still wearing them inside
the temple? And if they aren’t just
clothing, then the scene in the first episode with the empty wetsuit makes no
sense whatsoever, unless the acid can boil the insides of a Voord, but not the
flesh. But then there was a tear in the
suit, which is how the acid got in... Oh, never mind. But the point remains that if Yartek were so
desperate to appear like Arbitan, then surely a more appropriate vocal, as well
as a cloak which didn’t make his face-mask look so blatant, would have done a
better job. However, Ian sees through
the charade (if he hadn’t, we would not have been impressed) and gives him the
wrong key, leading the temple, and the Conscience, to explode.

The serial ends with that good old Terry Nation staple, a
soliloquy on right and wrong, as the Doctor surmises that maybe it is all for
the best, as such a machine should never be allowed to exist. The forcefield is removed from around the
TARDIS – although goodness knows how since Arbitan dies moments after the crew
left him – and the cast are free to continue their wandering through time and
space. And next time, we’re back with
John Lucarotti in Southern America.
Seriously, Nation never stood a chance, bookended as he was by two of
Lucarotti’s finest scripts. Oh well, on
with The Aztecs...

About Me

Scott Edwards is a teacher of English and Theatre Studies, with a BAHons in English Literature and Film Studies.He is also a self-professed ‘ming-mong’, and is now going to return to some Classic Doctor Who.